Healthy dose of education can help first-time parents

About 1 in 10 American children ages 2 to 5 is obese. Weight gain at this young age is strongly predictive of obesity in the teen years. So what can first-time parents do to get their kids started on the healthy path?

A study conducted in Australia of 542 parents showed the value of a little education. The new moms and dads were invited to attend six instructional sessions of two hours each, across 15 months. The sessions covered infant nutrition, feeding, physical activity and TV viewing. The control group received only newsletters on subjects that didn't include obesity.

The study found that children whose parents attended the tutoring sessions consumed 25 percent fewer sweet snacks and watched 25 percent fewer minutes of TV than the control group, at age 9 months.

The authors note that such knowledge-based help for new parents doesn't cost much (for the purposes of the study, the cost was about $508 per family).

The study was published in this week's edition of the journal Pediatrics.

Study shows early smokers used pipes

Native Americans ate pretty well – salmon and acorns and the like. But they also smoked pipes, according to a study at UC Davis.

Testing of the residue of pipes found in northwestern California shows that tobacco was grown and smoked in the region by at least A.D. 860, the earliest use of tobacco in the Pacific Northwest.

Researchers at the Department of Anthropology and the Feihn Metabolomics Laboratory at the UC Davis Genome Center are hoping to learn more about the cultivation of tobacco in California, as well as the nature of nicotine addiction. In another forthcoming study, scientists found nicotine in pipes smoked at an 800-year-old site in what is now Pleasanton.

Until this study, historians had been unsure when European traders had introduced tobacco to tribes living on the Pacific coast, and what plants the residents smoked in their pipes. Native people smoked a variety of plants and the tobacco they smoked contained less than 2 percent nicotine – compared with 4.5 to 8 percent in modern blends.

Anti-tobacco art contest open to kids

Speaking of smoking, the American Academy of Pediatrics is sponsoring an art contest for children in grades 3-12. The theme? “A World Free From Tobacco and Secondhand Smoke.”

There are three age groups: Grades 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12. The winner who submits the best piece of original artwork about the theme wins $500 in cash, plus $1,000 for travel expenses to attend a presentation at the AAP national conference in Orlando on Oct. 27. Second-place winners win $250.